Statues by sculptor Rowan Gillespie at Ireland Park, located at the foot of Bathurst St. in Toronto, in June, 2007.Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail
Robert G. Kearns is the founder and former chair of the Canada Ireland Foundation (formerly the Ireland Park Foundation). He currently serves as chair emeritus.
After a happy childhood growing up in Ireland, I chose to emigrate to Canada in November, 1979. I was 24 years of age. My Irish father and British mother and an aunt who lived with us were loving and caring. Of my three siblings, only my eldest brother stayed in Ireland.
The late 1970s were difficult times economically in Ireland. In early 1979, there was a series of strikes, including 200 petrol lorry drivers, making fuel hard to find for businesses. Unemployment was rising.
My arts degree in archaeology, and Greek and Roman civilization, was not an advantage for my employment prospects. However, in the two years before I left, I found work in the Irish ladies’ fashion industry. I have many happy memories of those years, travelling around Ireland, selling skirts and blouses to boutiques in towns and villages all over the country – whenever petrol was available – in my convertible Morris Minor.
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Every emigrant has a personal story. It is difficult to impart the magnitude of emotion in leaving the land of one’s birth. I left Ireland in 1979, with a spirit of adventure, proud of my Irish identity and heritage. I was not in any way a victim of oppression or starvation. I wanted to experience life outside of Ireland, lured by the great opportunities Canada had to offer.
I perceived Canada to be an open, accepting society, that had come together peacefully, respectful of cultural and linguistic diversity and the rights of minorities. Ireland and Canada also had ancient links of migration and was a haven for the Irish since the 16th century.
My flight to Toronto took seven hours, in contrast to the ghastly 40-to-90-day voyage across the Atlantic endured by the Irish Famine migrants who travelled as ballast in returning lumber ships. They were often referred to as “coffin ships.”
Landing in Toronto, I was awestruck by the vast expanse of electric light extending to the far horizon. No shortage of oil or petrol here, I mused.
I loved the city from the outset and was welcomed warmly by those who had come before me, and by Canadians in general.
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My first job was as a bartender. Three months later, I was recruited into the life insurance industry, a field that suited my love of meeting people. I was later invited to volunteer with the then-fledgling Ireland Fund of Canada.
In June, 1989, I met the late Irish Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney at a conference on Irish emigration in Cork. He described how the Irish diaspora had achieved “… a remarkable capacity to live in two times at the one place and two places at the one time.” These words have inspired my life in Canada, where I became a proud citizen in 1985, while maintaining my ties to Ireland.
As I built a career and a business, my persistent fascination with archaeology and history brought me back to my Irish roots. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Famine in 1997, an important public art installation by Irish sculptor Rowan Gillespie was unveiled on Dublin’s waterfront, depicting the departure of Irish Famine migrants.
Artist renderings of the Corleck Building, an arts and heritage venue and new home of the Canada Ireland Foundation, which is set to open beside Ireland Park this Fall.Supplied
Simultaneously, I became aware of a lost story of the Irish Famine migrants’ arrival in Toronto in 1847. That year, Toronto’s population of 20,000 received 38,560 Irish immigrants, many of whom had typhus, an incurable disease in those days.
To commemorate that extraordinary moment, Ireland Park opened at Bathurst Quay in 2007, featuring five bronze sculptures by Mr. Gillespie as a timeless and powerful statement on the immigrant experience. The project was supported by the former councillor for the neighbourhood, Olivia Chow.
This fall, The Corleck, an arts and heritage venue and new home of the Canada Ireland Foundation, will open beside Ireland Park. Its name is inspired by a stone sculpture on display in the National Museum of Ireland. Dating from the 1st century BC, the Corleck Head depicts the Celtic god Lug, with three faces – one looking to the future, one to the past and one inward to the soul, a fine metaphor for a city in which half its residents come from another country.
Through generations of immigrants, whether a Dublin man like me, or those from anywhere else in the world, Toronto has always responded with compassion. I believe that this enduring benevolence was stamped into the DNA of the city during that summer of sorrow in 1847 when Torontonians opened their arms to people in distress from across the sea.